Reflecting further on recent developments and discussions in Anglican life I am seeing the Anglican Communion in this way: there are contented Anglicans and discontented Anglicans.
In the discontented Anglican camp are the Diocese of Sydney and fellow travellers who seem to think the Reformation was prematurely stopped in its tracks and it is their calling to finish the job; many Anglo-Catholics who see Rome as the rock from which they are hewn and the Reformation as an unfortunate mistake; much of TEC and its fellow travellers who have no regrets for jettisoning the Thirty-Nine Articles and make no apology for the consequences of doing so.
In the contented Anglican camp are ... the rest of us! Content, that is, with the Anglican Communion being reformed and catholic; comfortable with the main lines of our thinking following Hooker's reasonable, traditional, and Scriptural approach; and happy to accommodate some different emphases (evangelical, liberal, catholic) so long as they do not seek to change the comprehensive character of Anglicanism as shaped by the historical shaping of the Church of England through the 16th and 17th centuries.
One thought I have, if it be accepted that there is a fault-line through Anglicanism between the discontented and the contented, is that a lot of the fighting energy for the current controversies is found on one side of the fault-line and not on both. Another thought is this: if there is to be a division in the Communion then all the discontented should go, otherwise the contented are lumbered with discontent for a further time.
But there need not be division! We could recognise that true communion involves holding discontented and contented together; that is, holding all the discontented together, not making choices as to which one of the discontented should stay and which should go.
The creative possibility flowing from the Sydney Synod is that we recognise that there will always be Anglicans, for one reason or another, from the 'left' or from the 'right', who wish to turn Anglican polity upside down. Thus we should learn to live with such 'revolutionaries' rather than work out how to dispense with them! At first sight diaconal presidents and gay bishops may not have much in common when stemming from Sydney and New Hampshire respectively. But both are 'dis-ordered' measured against traditional Anglican order. We could reject both. But we could also take the risky step of accepting both - not so much as a new Anglican order but in recognition that order can live with a little disorder.
3 comments:
"But we could also take the risky step of accepting both - not so much as a new Anglican order but in recognition that order can live with a little disorder."
No, it can't, Peter. 'Western' Anglicanism has a hardly a generation left in existence before it implodes irremediably. Which is pretty much what I give 'Western' culture as well.
...OK, I've been reading too much 'Spengler' [Asian Times] and Theodore Dalrymple. Give me reason for hope (besides the eternal hope, that is).
(Perhaps perversely!) if we have only one generation to go then a little disorder here or there will make no difference! More seriously, my point rests on the adjective 'little' ... if diaconal presidency is limited to a diocese or two, if the ranks of the openly gay bishops are just one or two ... then Anglicanism will survive that (though, point taken, Western Anglicanism may not survive the implosion of Western culture). Intriguingly TEC may implode whether or not the rest of Western Anglicanism implodes due to its inexorable heretical theology (see my next post), yet we also know that Sydney Anglicanism, orthodox though it is, is having a huge struggle to impact significantly on Sydney through evangelism. Nothing is easy for Western Anglicanism at the moment; though sometimes we ourselves make it a tough and difficult road to follow!
"we also know that Sydney Anglicanism, orthodox though it is, is having a huge struggle to impact significantly on Sydney through evangelism."
I am sure this is true - because the commanding heights of culture (education, media, entertainment, and now politics) are no longer occupied by Christians. Christian schools must be one part of the cultural fightback - or the secular Borgs (aided by Marcus Borg!) will have won.
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